Muse

So how did you two love rats meet?

Oh, it's a fun story. I was working on this project tearing down a condemned bar called The Desert Rash. I went in to meet with the contractors, and Diana is sitting at the bar drinking a seven and seven and seven.

Seven shots of Seagram Seven in Seven Minutes. It's Diana's morning drink.

Oh, that's right. It was very early in the morning. Well, this little spitfire finds out it's me who's closing down the bar. Next thing I know, she's got a knife to my face. I would have been scared if she hadn't been the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen in my life.

So how did you and Eleanor become friends? Well, let's just say that we lived in the same neighborhood. Oh, what a fun way to say a normal thing, right? TBTL!

Thank you so much for letting us rap. Don't hesitate. Feel free to clap. What's your question?

How much milk do I have to drink to be big enough to be quarterback?

Drink as much milk as your little belly can hold. Flouvelu, ovulu, tekefu, and tekefu, antel, patsen, keur, keur, fedle, tef, yekenebel, plups, plupfanteur, flouvelu, ovulu. Wait, what? So what was the exact question? Don't worry about it. I'll move on. It's all fine.

Be cool, get out there, and don't forget to be yourselves.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Good golly, Miss Molly!

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. I don't even know what I'm here for. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we have a wet Wednesday here, too. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. To usher in the month of November. It is November 1st, and we've gathered together to celebrate episode 4066 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. And also to mark day one of a complete and total Hail Mary on my part about trying to drop a few pounds before some filming stuff that I have to do. It was a waste of time to do that. I'm going to try to do something that they're calling a water fast. Never do anything out of hunger. Not even eating. You don't know how successful I think I'm going to be. It was supposed to start yesterday, and then I just decided, let's start it today. So, yeah, we'll talk about that a little bit. Also, in New Zealand, the new trend among some folks is to blast the music of Celine Dion, sometimes at 2 or 3 in the morning. They're called siren clubs.

Hey, want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?

So we'll get into that as well. Oh, and we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running cobro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's back in the Seattle area, and he just wants to touch those things.

They've never touched anything in their lives. Let them touch those things for once.

He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Those things are not my audio board to the person who attended the Halloween party. Oh, no. At my house while I was in Ohio and decided to crank the levels on the trim on my audio board. What are you doing? What are you doing that for? Leave my audio board alone. How many people about do you think were at the Halloween party? Genevieve said about 40. Why, you want to line them up? You want to start interrogating people?

I mean, if we rule Genevieve out, that's 39 suspects. But I don't think we can rule her out yet.

She's like, finally. It's a little early. I get to turn these knobs about a quarter of a turn. Now, it wasn't all messed up. It was just like, why is everything blasting out? And I realize, oh, somebody turned up. You know how there's a little knob at the top of each channel and a board that you can kind of increase, like, the preamp volume a little bit. For some reason, you know, I keep those, like a reasonable person, I keep those at about 1 o'clock. I come in, and they're all at 3 o'clock. I don't know why. I don't know why somebody felt the need to turn them a tiny bit. But anyway, it really was not that big of a deal. But I am dealing with this idea. I got home kind of late last night, probably got in the door, maybe around 9.30 or 10, probably about 9.30 last night. And Genevieve said that she gave herself a B minus on cleaning up after the party, which I just, you know, nodded. That's fine. But, man, that must be some sort of curve we are grading on.

I think a B minus was a little generous.

I think it's a little generous. I have a day of cleaning ahead of me. The kitchen floor looks like some sort of a cafetorium.

that is dealing with a strike from the maintenance crew, so I need to go clean that up a little bit.

Well, I support labor.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, no, I just set myself up to be a scab as I clean my own kitchen floor.

Yeah, are you crossing any sort of thicket line and cleaning your own kitchen floor?

I couldn't have done that any worse. So anyway, now I'm coming in a little bit crabby today. I'm a little bit tired. I stayed up late, super late last night because I was so glad to be home and huddering around.

Yeah. So so you because you were you were like you said you were like I got in kind of late. But then when you said nine or ten, I thought, well, this is a man who regularly stays up past that hour. And you also probably had a lot of pent up Andy time. Yeah. You were looking to have. Right. Because you'd been in Ohio, you'd been at your parents place. That's a kind of a certain sort of lifestyle and pace of life and autonomy, if you will, or just sort of personal space, etc. So you are probably like really ready to put your headphones on, get that levitard going and say hi to Dart Bot.

Well, it's interesting that you say that, you know, I, okay, I actually, there are several things I could bore you with based on how you just set me up there. After a trip like that, it's probably not going to be like playing Dark Bot. I didn't play any games, you know, like I came up, but I do like, first of all, you know, I caught up with Genevieve while I, I don't know if you are like this or not. Ideally, I'm guessing that you would, that you would like to be like this if you have the chance to do it. But when I get home, I like to unpack my suitcase right away. I like to get all the dirty clothes into the laundry room, into the washing machine. I like to, like, slowly put everything back. I can make it a bit of a process. If you know me at all, you won't be shocked to hear that. So I'm, like, catching up with Genevieve. But also, like, and again, like, I'm sort of kidding about the house. Like, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. Like, I was trying to figure out, like, what happened in our basement sink? Like, how is stuff stuck to the sides? I was just like, a normal person probably doesn't, the first thing they do when they come home is probably not scrub the sink with soft scrub, but I was just like, I don't feel like I'm at home right now. I could just feel the presence of 40-odd people in my house.

I love it that you're still getting most of the downside of having, there were literal ghosts of the party at your house, which is ironic considering it was a Halloween party.

Oh, yeah, and also the dummy, Genevieve took a bunch of my clothes and my new pitchfork, which I bought specifically for my compost. I go to stir up my compost last night. The pitchfork's gone. She's like, well, that's the spine of the horseman dummy I made. Well, I'm like, well, that doesn't do me any good or the compost any good. So I come home. There's like this dummy wearing my clothes sitting out on the front porch, scaring the hell out of me with a rubber horse head. Every time I see that thing, I go outside. It gives me a jump start. Yes, I see it outside the window this morning. I thought somebody was sitting on our porch.

It keeps scaring me. I see. So your beloved pitchfork that you, although I think of it more as a trident, or as I misdescribed it to you in text message, a triton. And then I had to look it up because a triton always sounds like the more official way to say trident, but triton was a character who had a trident.

Oh, I don't know triton.

Well, I didn't either, obviously, because I misused. I was like, it looks like a mariner's triton, except it doesn't break your heart. that was my review of your pitchfork but see I've got to be honest with you when you say pitchfork I'm thinking I made this joke the other day American Gothic the thing that guy is holding you know next to him in that famous painting yours is a little more like it's a little more designy it's a little more I don't know maybe updated maybe that's what the new pitchforks look like

well it's just a little guy it's just like you know it's something that I can hold in one hand and stir up some compost so it's not like

a big pitchfork. But he's creating part of this character this effigy that was that's currently residing on your front porch amazon

by the way has it as a berry and bird gardening hand fork for those who are really interested i

think more hand fork than pitchfork uh i'm glad that amazon agrees with me i'm glad jeff bezos

agrees sure yeah you you and jeffy um but uh yeah no i mean so it sounds like there's a lot going

on at your house that feels a little bit unsettled a little bit like not everything being kind of where you like it to be so that you can really get that's when you can get into your dart bot scene

yeah i'm hoping maybe to get there tonight although there's still a lot of cleaning to do but to answer your question last night yeah so like it's like i'm talking with vives we're catching up on our weeks you know because we've been apart for probably about five days i'm unpacking putting everything away doing some light setup of my studio but saved most of that for the morning cleaning the i mean every surface was like whether it's the floor beneath my feet or the counters or whatever just sort of caked with residue of whatever so like i'm i don't want to pile on

but this is definitely not b-minus territory like i mean this sounds honestly you know what this sounds like my house but the thing i'll say about my house is it's under construction there's literally people taping mudding drywall as we speak like um i i think i don't think of myself as a I'm a relative

tidy person but not a clean person the way you are or the way becca is and i aspire to be more clean i usually have things relatively organized but i don't do the thing where i get you know behind the couch with the vacuum cleaner or spray into the corners with the you know whatever clorox you're using um that being said even i think if i will i cannot walk across a sticky floor more than once without remedying the situation that will live in my head like that is one of the that and stepping on a lego if you have bare feet are just two of the worst experiences

of a modern life yeah and i usually wear these i have like several pairs of these very cheap like kind of they're like they're like um really like cheap knockoff versions of maybe like slip-on dock sider shoes sort of that i wear around the house sort of like slippers but i can they're kind of indoor outdoor but i get them they're like literally 20 bucks at target i think they're the cheapest shoes i can find but i'll usually just buy a couple of pair like one in a backup or whatever and i sort of like rotate them in and out and they're kind of my house it's a real burbank move um but they two at a time they have rubber soles and like um so just like if i walk into a floor and it's like as i pick them up because you know and i'm just like oh so i i took care of the little uh floor we have downstairs but uh today we need to get through this show as quickly as possible i know we have a meeting at 1 30 i might let you and uh sklar off handle that yourself because i got some real cleaning to do and i'm hoping to get the house to a point brand new refrigerator i left this house with a refrigerator that was merely days old there was no better feeling than having a refrigerator where everything had we'd thrown away all the stuff that genevieve swore for years that we would never like you know she's like no that's still good i'm like well it's growing stuff it's still good okay fine we get a new refrigerator finally we purge the old stuff uh we have a brand it's brand new and now i come in there's like sticky chocolate shit and just loose crumbs in the refrigerator and i gotta i'm really sad i missed this party and and also it's just packed it's just packed with like so it's like two gallons of cider in there we'll never drink but everything is like just like opened with one drink poured out of it so we can't leave it out you know what i mean like the refrigerator is just packed with shit so anyway um it sounds like i'm in a terrible mood the truth is i don't mind tackling this stuff it's fine i'm not really i'm honestly i'm not that irritated by this and and you're right like genevieve to her like i think it's more like well there isn't a bunch of stuff beer bottles are not there aren't beer exactly garbage has been thrown away right but it was sort of funny because she's like well nobody went in your office i made sure nobody went in your office oh yeah that's where this all started and i'm just like yeah no problem and i honestly i really don't care i'm sort of being a little bit overly dramatic here but it was sort of like a parent coming home and being like you didn't have any parties did you and the kids are like no but I'm like okay then why is this and this is a literal story like why is there a crumpled up um jello shot plastic container on my studio table like this sort of seems like somebody was probably not bingo that was that was probably not bingo um but uh yeah so um anyway so today I'm actually I love that Genevieve is

played by anthony michael hall in this scene and and you come home and everything kind of to the first glance looks pretty okay like we did not think that genevieve michael hall was going to get the whole place cleaned up before you got home but then she's just standing on kind of a part of the carpet that's actually a slight hill like it's a mound and you go what is that and then it's like she pulls the carpet back and it's just like 800 beer bottles yeah she's shoved under the rug that she's been bouncing on precariously and then a closet opens and just like four people

fall out who are all still drunk and high well veves and i got a came up with a great uh movie idea last night as i sort of and by the way it was not like i don't mind doing the the the clean like did some vacuuming while we were chatting yesterday and sometimes genevieve feels like i'm cleaning at her i don't know if that's a phrase that she uses but i can sort of feel like sometimes it's irritating to her when i'm cleaning and i can't stress enough i'm just cleaning because i like my environment to be clean that's how i'm comfortable i'm not doing this passive aggressively i'm just doing this because i want it to be clean and so last night it was nice like we're just chatting i'm cleaning up a little bit and then um i go and i go into my bathroom and um i i for some reason just instinctively decided to pull back the shower curtain to see if there i was just like is there any chance somebody is still passed out in my bathtub and like keep in mind this party was saturday and this was late tuesday night so that would have been a real feat um and i said they've got a lampshade on their head yeah and then genevieve lean heavily into the stereotype genevieve said that would be a great setup for a like a movie right like only maybe this is a little bit dark but like you know somebody throws a party and they clean everything up and everything's fine but then a couple of days later maybe the parents come home they go in the bathtub nobody thought to check the downstairs bathtub right and there's a body in there. Yeah.

we have to figure out what happened that's probably 60 percent of the dateline nbcs that i watch oh really speaking of which i had i really um i kind of want to talk about this cockamamie diet thing i'm trying to do oh yeah because i think it'll make me be more the the already slim chance that i'll stay with it will will grow to be a little less slim if there's some accountability around it for me but i was just going to say on the subject of dateline nbc i had a kind of weird moment i texted myself last night to remember to bring this up potentially so you know who keith morrison is right he's the host of dateline i mean he's kind of the most famous guy on dateline nbc he has that very kind of gaunt face and kind of gray hair i only know him now because he was

in the news my stepmom was pointing out that apparently he is matthew perry's um mom yeah

yeah for many years i mean i think he was a pretty pretty much a father figure to to matthew Perry. And I thought it was a really, I mean, I don't have a take on this other than it was just a weird thing because Keith Morrison's job is to plumb the sort of depths of a lot of people's really painful moments, trauma when they lose their loved ones. And his job is to go where some sort of murder happened and then interview the people that will talk to him about it and then speculate and then, you know, kind of stand on a street corner and going out here, the sky is as big as all of montana but this but the house felt very small on that tuesday night in missoula whatever like you know he is a person who is and i'm not trying to be mean to him because he's going through a lot and also i watch dateline nbc which i have pretty mixed feelings about my own behavior in that like i don't i find it to be very um kind of engaging and engrossing but i also don't like that it's built on the misery of other people and i just thought i was watching a dateline last night with Keith Morrison doing his thing. And then I thought, oh yeah, I just saw this guy in kind of a version of that moment because the paparazzi were taking pictures of him and his wife walking into the house where his stepson was found deceased. And I just thought, what an interesting thing for this guy who is usually the person on the other side of the camera and now it's his life. And I wonder if any part of that experience, cause he just had this look on his face of a person who was is in the throes of terrible grief uh and i don't want to i don't want to you know belittle that or anything but it's just interesting i wonder if i wonder if he's been in a moment like this before if he's ever been the person who's grieving and who has a camera pointed at them and i wonder if it will in any way impact how he does his job going forward

was kind of the thought that went through my mind wow yeah that is that is um that is interesting i I did not realize all of that. And by the way, the Matthew Perry thing, I never really had much of an opinion of him. But if I did have one and by the way, I'm I'm going somewhere with this. I'm not just being cruel with the way I'm setting this up. I would guess that it veered towards the negative. I didn't like Friends. I kind of actively disliked the TV.

This is one of the least shocking things I've heard.

Yeah, I mean, and that's fine. But I mean, I didn't watch it. I didn't spend a lot of time griping about it. It just wasn't for me. It just seemed like a weird laugh track show that I did not find relatable in any way.

Meanwhile, I would have killed to be Joey or Chandler from that show. That's just I was had my my my my gap, whatever you want to call cargo pants on. I was just sitting there like, please let me find a way to get to Jennifer Aniston's heart.

And yeah, I just, you know, I didn't I didn't watch it. I liked Seinfeld. And there was something about friends that maybe just seemed a little corny to me. But then as time went on and they had that reunion a few years ago. And that's where I think maybe that's maybe where I learned that Matthew Perry had his struggles. And some people said that he didn't look like kind of totally with it. I don't know if I remember remembering that correctly.

But during the reunion, there was some speculation that he might have been struggling.

Yeah. But what I didn't realize was and I just sort of thought like, oh, yeah, that's a guy who kind of flamed out early and just I just didn't think about it much. But man, hearing the outpouring, the personal outpouring from people who knew him and worked with him and like this one that I heard somebody posted, I think our friend Sarah posted Hank Azaria of all people, who I also don't think about all that much either, just posted this three minute thing. And I happened to be in a place where I could listen to it. And he just gave this tribute to Matthew Perry talking about him, not like his career, what he did on the screen, but what the man he was behind the scenes as both a friend and a funny person, but also just like as a friend and a friend who tried to use his own struggles to help other people with their struggles and his experience with that. I am so touched at what a what a person he is. I'm so glad to hear these stories because, again, my if I thought of it at all, it was just kind of like, whatever that guy, you know, and like to hear what a special person he was. I wish I had known these stories more when he was still alive, but it sounds like he was very, very loved. And it does sound like despite his struggle.

was he knew he was loved because these people seemed to feel it very strongly.

Yeah, he kind of had this, I don't know if the term would be victory lap, but he wrote this book, this memoir that came out a year or so ago, and it was because obviously that show, Friends, was just such a juggernaut, and because he was such a critical part of it. Everybody was talking about this book, and he was doing all these interviews, and a lot of it was about his struggles with substance abuse. and it was kind of like he got to go on this like kind of like not I mean of course no one knew at the time it was a farewell tour but it's like he basically got to go and go on all of the shows and talk to all the people and be I believe a sober person at that point and I think you know the term that people say is like getting your flowers or whatever I feel like he kind of got to get his flowers which was kind of cool like whereas if he had been meaning to write this book or something because the other things that I've heard about him and his life at that time was that he was um you know during the pandemic and stuff was as a lot of people were really suffering through some loneliness and stuff um and you know he had this kind of also for me i'm no matthew perry but i am up on this big hill right now looking out at like a river kind of thinking hey does this does this quell whatever is not ever fully at ease inside of me and you know he he his life ended in this jacuzzi and he had put up a kind of a photo on instagram i don't know maybe a week before where he was in the same jacuzzi and he has headphones on they look like maybe they're those uh airpod max ones the big ones that go around your ear and he's listening to presumably some music it's a beautiful night he's looking out at the like twinkling lights of los angeles he's basically in exactly the moment that i obsess over and think if i was in that moment then everything would be okay inside of me and he said something in the caption on the instagram was something like who knew like warm water and listening to some nice music makes you feel good or something you know and so again i don't think i'm matthew perry by any stretch but there was something that i could really relate to about this guy's life and also just about literally this moment of like him being in this hot tub and looking out at the twinkling lights that being a thing that he kind of needed or really sought out to kind of probably i don't know emotionally regulate or feel something um that's not just naturally occurring in him and i'm definitely that way like i don't i wish i could just go bloom where i'm planted or sit in a room and just be sort of like that's enough but i'm just not really wired that way um but also yeah the sobriety stuff and the hearing the way he helped other people i think john stamos was another person who talked about how um really helpful um matthew perry was and it sounds like he was somebody who in the periods of his life that he was sober and like working his program was really really instrumental in a lot of other people's kind of sober journey. So, you know, that's a pretty good testament to the guy who had sort of had some real highs and some real lows in his life. Yeah, definitely. Okay, speaking of highs and lows,

why don't we thank some donors and then I'll tell you about this truly unsustainable plan that I'm trying to launch as of this morning.

So the highs are thanking the donors and the lows is your new water diet?

The highs are how unbelievably effable I'm going to be after this water diet, Andrew And the lows are that I have to do the water diet

Oh, that's funny, because I'm ineffable

I don't know how that works as a show title But I like it It's a very, very solid joke

Thank you, baby

Let's thank some of our donors. These are the wonderful, generous people keeping TBTL going. This is listener-supported podcasting. It is... Like, you might hear, I mean, like, public radio is obviously famously listener-supported. I mean, the vast majority of the money that public radio brings in is through listeners. But there's some other stuff going on. There's some Ron Tonkin, Believe in Nice, when I'm listening to OPB. There's some Kitchen Caboodle. It's a pretty solid name for a place that sells, like, mixers and things. Kitchen Caboodle.

Do we get any grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting?

No, we get nothing from Jarl and Pamela Moan. We're not even on the Bill and Melinda Gates' radar.

What about the Kroc Foundation? Anything coming in there?

I burned through all that money at Pallet Casino once, and it was really regrettable.

So that really does leave these listeners.

That just leaves Katie Porter of Hillsborough, North Carolina. I might have said this last time we thanked Katie or somebody else in Hillsborough, but I'm pretty sure that was, no, maybe that was Hickory. I thought that might have been where my old pal Carl Castle was from. One time of wait, wait, don't tell me announcing. I know he was from North Carolina. Katie, thank you for checking in from Hillsboro. Also, thanks to Linda Hill, who's in Bothell, Washington.

Now, I don't like to make light of people's names or spoof on them necessarily, but I'm wondering, is there an irony that Katie Porter is in Hillsboro, but Linda Hill is not in Hillsboro? She's in Bothell.

I mean, why do you drive on the parkway and park on the driveway?

Thank you. Hold on, I'm going to smash this watermelon over here. That's the level of humor I'm going for. That's what I love it today. I'm very tired. I'm very into it. You know who else loves it? Linda. Linda loves it.

David Brumley is medium on it. David Brumley is in Bellevue, Washington. Now, why isn't his name David Bell? Do you see what I'm going? Yeah, no, I definitely. I got it all written now. And I like your building the joke, too. That's actually what I'm enjoying about it so much. No, it's not dragging it. It's not. No, building it.

It's not dragging. It's not smashing it further and further into the ground.

It's building it up. It's not leaking. It's overflowing with humor. Joe Brenton is in North Bend, Washington. North Bend, Washington. Thanks. See? That made me laugh. That legitimately made me laugh. Your commitment to this.

I'm going to kill my mic. You go ahead. I'm done. I'm done.

Absolutely. No, I think you've added something to the experience for everyone, including Chad Norman of Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. Now, do we have a couple of Chads in that part of the world? because that's not our Chad who we ran into at the Minnesota State Fair, is it?

No, I believe that Chad is a Minnesotan, I believe. That's a Minnesota Chad, I think.

Were they both part of the Chad Act of 1974? I believe so, yeah. In the state of Wisconsin and Minnesota, 70% of the people needed to be named Chad, right? I think that's it. I need to brush up. Yeah, it was tied into the Eisenhower Interstate, the approval of that interstate system, with also the chad act they threw that in for um hubert humphrey anyway uh bonnie d padua is in garden grove california and is also supporting the show thanks bonnie do you think

it's could you and i don't i do not have any inside information here but do you think instead of d padua it could be de padua i think it could be although there's a space there is yeah but i

guess you know i don't bonnie get at us let us know so we can say your name uh correctly uh let's Let's go, let's take it two ways in three, two, one. Thanks to Bonnie de Padua, Garden Grove, California. And of course, we've also got to thank Bonnie de Padua, Garden Grove, California. See, we've got options there. So you can just have John Sklaroff reach out to Bonnie, get a clarification, and then just edit out whichever one of those I did incorrectly. That would be pretty great.

That sounds good. But we're going to need more funding in order to get that production. Somebody get Yarl and Pamela Moon on the line, please.

Thanks to our donors, we couldn't do this without you for reals. Hello and welcome to Top Story. Okay, so as I say sometimes, the top story from my life is I have some stuff coming up. In particular, Andrew, I'm going to be filming some stuff for a large software concern on the east side of the greater Seattle area. and blizzard that's right activision i'm finally they're going to cover me in ping pong balls and i'm going to be nice uh guy in grand theft auto did they make that i don't know it is crazy what a blind spot video game that's what the blizzard reference was right yeah but they're santa monica what is the big uh i was just looking that up because blizz they they did they just merged by the way they did blizzard activision and a large software concern on the east side i see that i never for some reason name except for the sometimes when i name it um that that company they did merge i think there was some european pushback against that but it's like it's video games y'all this is not cell phone service like there was some antitrust stuff and i mean i this is this is a backhanded slap at gamers i don't mean to be because i know we have a lot of listeners who are gamers but like if there were a monopoly on the video games I would not it would not keep me up at night I think you I think it's a bad take

because I mean you're not familiar with that world it doesn't mean as much to you but I mean you wouldn't say that about the film industry which obviously has had a lot of labor disputes and and in issues and we're making sure that there isn't too much consolidated power there that has in you know that has bad effects on the people who are working in that industry and

I guess you're thinking of a monopoly as it impacts yeah yeah no I agree it's bigger than the, I mean, it generates more money than the film industry. I just mean, yeah, I mean, I mean, from my personal standpoint, because I'm not a gamer, it doesn't, it's not something that concerns me greatly, but also it's, when I think of a monopoly, this is where people really tuned in today to hear me break. down my thoughts on monopolistic practices i guess when i think of the downside of a monopoly it's more consumer-faced versus the people that work at the place like i don't know if the people working at ma bell were getting a bad deal out of it but i think the people trying to have phone service were getting a bad deal um but uh but yes you're absolutely right you're absolutely right monopolies

are bad yeah do you think that blizzard makes a monopoly video game pro very likely that's very very likely.

Anyway, I have to film this stuff coming up. And I have been not super loving kind of some of my, here's the weirdest thing. I think really what's happening is I'm just aging because my actual weight is not, I mean, I went to the doctor recently and I told you that like, I was pretty dreading the weigh-in and then when it happened, I was like, well, it's, you know, kind of in the neighborhood of what I was, what I sort of imagined. Like it's, I've, I've sort of set, I've settled at a point now it's not a point that I love, but I've kind of settled at a certain point that I'm just kind of at, and it doesn't seem to really be going, certainly not going down, but it's also not going up rapidly. What it's not is the weight that I was 15 years ago, you know, but, but even so my clothes fit, generally speaking, you know, I was wearing a tuxedo recently, which boy, that's a game called, will it fit once a year? I have to put this tuxedo on and go, can this still go on my body? But anyway, I think part of what's happening is I'm just getting older and I don't really love how that looks, but I'm attributing it to maybe some lifestyle stuff, just not eating particularly healthy. Cause I fast. And then when I'm done fasting, then I just like eat whatever I want, which is bad. And then I also definitely consume too much alcohol for a healthy lifestyle. And so I don't know, I've just had some moments recently where i've just caught a picture of myself or just looked at myself and been like burbs so this is this is you know just life uh but it's for for you know most of us but it's it's very for me it's it becomes a big problem when i'm going to spend three solid days being filmed close up because these videos that i make for this big company for blizzard activision what's actually great about it by the way is that becca's sister-in-law tiffany who i love works for blizzard activision which means i believe she will now have to do her cyber training under his eye and by that i mean my eye like i think i'm going to be the host of her cyber training which will be great for her because she'll finally get some luke burbank in her life anyway these things that when they film them it's not even like me doing a cbs story where i can kind of just i'm not even in the story very much i'm kind of like i can be sort of in In the background, by the way, sorry, Amazon is delivering some corrugated cardboard to my house right now because I'm going to be doing what's called the lasagna method of creating some of these planter beds and getting rid of some of the grass and weeds where you put down a thing of cardboard and then you cover it with soil and then you put down another one and then you wait for it all to deteriorate and then you've just got some really rich nitrogen-rich soil.

would you say the lasagna method is what got you into this uh water diet in the first place

seriously andrew if you want to know if you if you like if you want to get real so yesterday was supposed to be day one of this whole water fast thing and i was already well i ran so i was reading can you exercise during a fast and they're like yeah on day one it's fine because you still got a lot of calories in your system you're you're fine after that like maybe don't go crazy on the exercise because you're kind of, you're just, your body's hopefully starting to burn up a lot of the extra stuff that's kind of lying around. And if you, if you do exercise too hard, um, and you deteriorate your muscles, one of the schools of thought is those muscles won't get replaced because there's not the right kind of calories in your body to replace it. Like if you were trying to bulk up or whatever. So anyway, yesterday I went for a run. I don't know if that was a bad idea, but I was so hungry by like three and I was trying to research how to do some of this project this lasagna thing and every time i would type lasagna in it would take me to lasagna recipes and i think it's what i think it's what sidetracked my attempts yesterday at day one of my water so i'm not even kidding but i uh uh yeah so i just have not been feeling i've not been feeling incredibly great about my uh about my appearance in the world which is not really new for me but it's just i don't know it's just been it's been a little extra bad lately kind of my feelings around it and i know i have this thing coming up that uh that is just it's it's like i said it's not like a cbs story because i kind of know how to cheat those now first like the lighting is very flattering and i kind of lean forward and i write the story so you don't see a lot of my face or i'm walking down the street with someone but it's kind of a long shot we call it a walk and talk these training videos are like skits where i'm the main person in the skit and there's like four cameras and they're They're like, it's like a really like a movie. It's the closest I'll ever get to film. like a tv show or a movie it's a it's a lot of attention on me and it's also andrew this kind of for me it's a yearly check-in in the degradation of my body because i've been doing this for five six years now about on a 12-month cycle and it's it's like it's like a check-in with like how much i'm letting myself go or how old i'm getting or how you know just the again this sort of degradation of the human form but it's kind of weird to have like a once a year three-day check-in on like how not great it's going um and so i uh i decided that i'm going to try to fix all of this by not eating anything for which you know again i'm not i don't fix all this by never eating again that's all andrew i mean i play one of your favorite drops just never do anything out hunger not even eating that made you so mad before the show i hated that show i hated that

season of that version of that true detective um i hated that character well i'm sorry i'm blanking on in the moment vince vaughn vince vaughn i really dislike vince vaughn uh i hated his performance in that i hated the way it was his his character was written that drop we played kind of mocking you know sort of mockingly um but also i did not remember the bad grammar never do anything out of hunger even eating even do anything out of hunger not even eating can you edit it so it just says eat i mean that is i can explain to you how that sets my teeth on edge never do anything out of hunger even eating it should be even eat right let's try it again never do anything out of hunger not even perfect that's better make it shorter drop keep making it shorter and shorter and shorter it's just all right anyway this is the thing i want to also

stress that like we things have really evolved on this show over the years in terms of how we talk about our own bodies and certainly other people's bodies which we don't really get into a lot of course in the early early days of this show literally the staff we all weighed ourselves and reported it which was seemed like a funny bit at the time but it's definitely not kind of what we would do now i think we live in a thankfully hopefully a somewhat more body positive world etc so i don't want this to be taken by anyone as any kind of uh what example of how i think anyone should be but like what i really personally feel like i can't handle right now is three straight days of feeling like if i'm in here talking to you uh you know or making a hey dummies video it's like it is what it is i can handle that but like if i am at the current state that i'm in right now if i imagine myself in this current state with everything going on and with you know how my face and body and everything appears and then just like walking onto set and just knowing that i have like three 10 hour days of filming in front of me i will feel so like the the the discomfort that that will create for me is so great that i feel like if i can take extreme and evasive action right now it's not going to be fun but it will be hopefully somewhat effective and it will also just like i it shouldn't be the case in my brain that if i see a certain number on the scale i feel more okay but it is the case and if i can see that number on the scale before i have to film these things i will feel like hey this is going to be a fun three days or this will be it's great to hang out with my old friends and and and make some money and do this thing. If I go in the way I'm going in right now, it will just be, I will dread it so badly because of how much it plays on my insecurities. So, um, so I'm going to try, I mean, I'm trying to do this for 10 days. That's probably lunacy considering I made it till 4 PM yesterday before I started craving lasagna. But the idea is to, and I definitely will just say that my body is capable of losing some weight and still being, it would not be an unhealthy thing for me to lose some in terms of most of the metrics that we use it's not like i'm i'm not somebody who's dealing with a disordered eating currently that i can tell um but i am i just have uh i have also ordered some of this like really great flavored like kind of stuff that you can put in your water to kind of zazz it up i've got uh you know all my little i'm gonna let myself drink coffee with uh without cream in it which i don't know if that's like officially in the rules or not i mean and the thing i'll say about this is anywhere you look at the data on this everyone who does this immediately gains everything back as soon as they stop doing this like i'm i'm under no illusions about this being like this in the words of cold play this will not fix me like i don't think this

will fix me i do think if i can just really knuckle down and just kind of go through a little bit of bore also by the way the not drinking thing

That's because I'm not going to drink either.

That'll probably be it. That'll be, well, that'll be, might be the hard, I don't know if you're going to say that's the hardest, but that also might be where you're going to see a lot of the just wasted calories making the biggest difference.

I kind of think, I mean, I think part of what I don't like about my appearance is I think I look really puffy because I think, you know, I'm carrying around a lot of, a lot of, you know, spent alcohol calories and then it's like, it'll be like, oh, have too many drinks and then eat a pizza at 11 o'clock at night. And of course, you're going to wake up the next day and you're, you know, your physical form is not going to be at its absolute peak. So it'll be interesting to see. What I'm really thinking is I am going to be peeing so much, Andrew.

That's going to be satisfying, though.

I might have to build something because there's not a bathroom out here in the studio. I might have to bring some kind of a chamber pot out here with me because what's going to be happening, again, if I stick with this, what's going to be happening is I will be drinking a lot of liquids probably out of boredom and out of like wanting to feel somewhat satiated but there's no salt and what I've noticed because I did a juice fast before I think I did like a juice cleanse or something when I lived in Bellingham I want to say for like I don't know was that was maybe five or six days and what was really satisfying about it was you pee so much because i eat so much sodium that my body is constantly hanging on to probably like five to 20 pounds of water at all times it's like my body is just like a perfect sponge for just hanging on to water because it's got so much salt in it and what i noticed when i did that juice fast because there's not other than whatever natural amount of salt is in a piece of celery or something your body my body just like immediately just released all this water and i had to pee constantly thank god there is now a bathroom upstairs in my house where i sleep because i don't think i could do this before there was a bathroom upstairs like i don't think it would even be practical because i'm guessing that that that the longer i do this and again if i actually stick with it i'm going to be peeing like three times an hour

i know this would have been incredibly complicated maybe cross uh cost prohibitive but um and i'm not trying to make you feel bad about the beautiful place you're building up there but now that you say that i am kind of surprised that you didn't find a way to build a bathroom in that in that new studio but i guess it's just like oh there is you'd have to run pipes and everything

oh yeah we did oh i dug a trench oh it's just not plumbed yet oh okay great as i'm kind of surprised

like you're doing so much on that it seems like wow you're because that's going to be a living space for people who stay over and everything i'm like wow no it hasn't i mean it's it's all

plumbed and wired for a bathroom like with a toilet and a shower and obviously a sink and then there's a laundry room and i actually already have the instant on hot water heater um and then there's an area for like a kitchen a small kitchen island and kitchen so theoretically someday this is this will be a fully functional place that that you know somebody could stay in or whatever it's not there yet though right now i mean maybe i could just pee in the there's a pipe i mean there's a there's a piece of like whatever it is you know like black plastic pipe kind of coming out of the ground to where the bathroom is going to be. I guess I could just use that.

Yeah, be careful.

And that's tied in. That's tied into the sewer line.

Yeah, just make sure. Don't do what I did as a youth, which was I was very excited to see that my uncle had parked his RV in our driveway for future use for, I think, a family trip of ours. And I was like, hey, look, toilet. And I used it. And it turns out that was not ready to be used yet. And that was one of those times I was talking to some family members this weekend when I in Cleveland like there are a lot of times as a child that you get in trouble for something but I feel like for me personally 99% of those times you know you're doing something that could potentially get you in trouble you're you're skirting the rules or breaking the rules or doing something that you feel like you shouldn't get caught doing or you'll get in trouble but there are like the ones that I remember the most are the ones that it was shocking to me that I in trouble for like i had no idea i was doing anything wrong and one of those was uh using the bathroom that was not ready to use in an rv and i believe somebody had to clean that up i don't know

who it was but that's such a kid thing too you're just like wait this has a bathroom in it right yeah let's do this let me let's let's do a shakedown cruise let's let's stress test this baby

hey um back to your diet thing this is actually not about your diet thing this is this is another aside that is related to uh my recent trip but it was something i was thinking about this morning i was wondering when i could spring this on you this idea i have and by the way i'm not married to this at all this could be a very bad idea um and i'm more than uh willing to hear that feedback that's fine but um do you remember i know you do uh when you started the show with jen flash andrews and sean detoria you guys would do your weigh-ins from day one you would do it was an interesting way to start the radio show. I know that you have a low, you know, you stopped doing that a long time ago and you've kind of low keyed some of the crazy diet talk. That was a big part of the show for a long time. Yeah. Because of the way people think about their own bodies. You don't want to be triggering for others. This is your journey. You can do. Also, you got to do something crazy every now and then to keep the show interesting. And so I appreciate you doing crazy shit. But sure. Proud to serve. I know that you don't want to do the weigh ins at the at the beginning of the show anymore. But this is a very different idea but i had it today and i want to run it by you when i was in cleveland uh my dad gave me a gift that he bought for me at costco or costco as i like to say um because that is how you say cost i don't know why we say costco do you say costco i think i say costco but

i totally agree with you that it should be cost co the cost of this co yeah which by the way yeah

I need to hear an update on your Costco situation with the vacuum when there is one.

I've got to find that attachment. It's somewhere in this – it's actually probably somewhere in this studio that I'm at.

But this is – I'm making this way too long of a conversation. But basically, my dad got me a – something I did not know was back on the market, which is the Far Side Off the Wall daily calendar. They recreated it for 2024. According to the back of the box, it said they – you know, Larson – why am I blanking on Larson? Gary Larson. Gary Larson started doing this, I believe, in 1995, and now almost 30 years later, they've brought it back, the Farsight off-the-wall daily calendar. This was such a part of my youth. I loved my Farsight calendars. Is there any world in which, once we are in 2024 and this calendar is ready to be peeled, do we start every episode of TBTL in the year 2024 with me telling you what the Farsight joke of the day is?

wow um how about this yeah why don't we try it why don't we try it why don't we see how it's going that's not that's not me being that's not me thinking it's a bad idea that's me saying let's not lock ourselves into 365 of it but let's definitely try it for like the month of january

i think it would be i think it's going to be the most interesting when it is the hardest to explain that's what i'm really looking forward to not to slam dunks but there are a lot in there that i just don't remember and i don't know if that's because i don't remember my memory isn't as good as i thought it was or um because they went and they found ones that were maybe less published or what have you but i was going through it and they were having me they weren't getting me laughing were there some oldies but goodies too they're all oldies i believe like um you know gary larson we talked about this on the show he did start penning a few new cartoons in recent years oddly because he learned about digital illustration tools yes right and he's like oh my ink was drying out in between you know my cartoons because i don't do it that much but then i was playing on wasn't he playing on like his niece's ipad or something like that something very adorable love that uh but no there's not enough to fill a calendar so yeah these are all old uh classic far sides but they weren't ones that like kind of wrote they didn't seem like the the the top you know top of the pops they seem like slightly um slightly deeper cuts but anyway yeah so i'm

excited about that we don't have to do it on the show it's not secret tools or cow tools no secret what was there was one there was like i think it was some crows that had a spatula and it was like they were it's kind of dark actually but they were scooping up roadkill because it was so flat and it was like the secret tools of the secret tools of buzzards or something maybe they weren't crows Maybe they were like vultures, but it was like a car goes by. And then my memory is like a car goes by and they're all being normal. And then when they're left to their own devices, they have a spatula or something.

Yeah, this rings a bell.

I don't know why that lived large in my head.

Yeah, I'm looking for this baby now, but I can't find it.

But of course, I wonder if he's eliminated what I'll be totally honest. You know, when you're a kid, there are a lot of things that strike you as funny that hopefully when you become an adult and you have more lived experience and you kind of realize more. what the journey we're all on is you might go yeah that's not really a joke for me but there the one when i was a kid was there's like you know the guy's got the donut shop and he's like i i can't he's like you know i can't figure out what's going on we're we're making more donuts than ever but we're losing money and then he's got this kid working there who's a very very big kid let's just say and i just remember as when i was a kid thinking that was a really funny joke now i think that's a joke at someone the expense of someone's body i wonder if he's gone through if gary larson has gone through or united syndicate whoever does that and if i mean i don't think there were a lot of jokes like that that were kind of like jokes that we really wouldn't make anymore but i wonder if they've gone through and like pulled those out because i i feel like that was one of the ones that came up a lot because i think a lot of people thought that was one of his classics but now i don't think it's particularly appropriate there was one in the calendar that i

saw that uh you know it wasn't like out i don't feel like it was outright racist but it was like it involved native americans and i was like huh you're going with that huh we're right like you could have like

that like maybe just go through the archives and find one that doesn't have somebody in like a

headdress yeah exactly because it's like okay like you're not that's not like erasing history it's like you have you have curated this out of hundreds and hundreds you have chosen 365 and you could have gone with something else there um by the way i did find let's see it was march 11th 1988 secret tools of the common crow and you do see a crow on the road uh standing next to roadkill which is a very flattened animal of some sort uh and it's just holding a spatula i got much more of that

right than i would have yeah all i'm saying is that this farsight year-long calendar better have health in it greatest farsight cartoon comic whatever you call it of all time oh never mind it just says health never mind it just says health that has really stuck with me anyway all i uh But enough about enough about me and my my wackadoo ideas, but I will just see I will I will keep y'all posted and I'll do my best to be very honest with the listeners about how far I actually make it on this thing I mean it could be I make it Seven days. I can make it ten days. I can make it one day. I don't really know but I'm gonna try to Oh speaking of calendars You know, this is very calendar based for me because I bought a new calendar Last month because you know, I'm kind of setting the office up in here I have a filing cabinet now, not to brag. And I have a wall calendar. It's not enormous like the one I used to have because there's not really a proper place for that. But it is a pretty, you know, it could be a desk calendar too. It's probably meant to be a desk calendar, but I like to hang it up on the wall. And I will tell you this, Andrew, it is just so sad. I was in the Target near my house and I was like, I'm going to buy a calendar. But I was like, but man, what a rip off. Like it's October. Like what am I even doing? And then I looked at the calendar. this desk calendar guess what it said hmm October it's October through October what like of course you can do that oh of course you can do buying it online no no I was buying it I was in this physically in the store I was like in the target in like Vancouver Washington or something in their office supply section but I was like I guess I'm just gonna I was like you know I mean the calendar was six bucks or whatever so I was like I guess I'm just gonna like waste you know eight months of the year or something like and then it only was when i got home but i looked and i was like

holy shit this is october so every month they just get a new load of that's that actually surprises me if you were ordering it online i could see them sort of like you know being able to maybe um create them as needed sort of and ship them out but the idea that the targets are like well it's november get the november to november calendars in here well you know what

let me double check this let me double check this because of course today's november 1st i've got this thing right in front of me because what i was going to say is a big part of my motivation to do things is getting to write something on the calendar that indicates that it's happened you know with my old calendar i used to do an x any day that i remember to do my exercises and stuff and like us starting the show and me having taken a shower and gotten my jog out of the way walking over to this little dry erase thing and putting an x on it was so gratifying it was often the thing that got me to do the exercise so for this water fast i'm uh i'm very excited about writing a 10 today on november 1st i'm going to write a 10 on here and then i'm going to write a 9 tomorrow when i do it i'm going to see if somehow this way of tracking it for me will keep me strong will keep me doing this but anyway let me double check because maybe i just maybe i let's see okay so So I've got November, 2023, December, 2023, January, 2024, Feb. There we go. Yeah, it's happening. March, 2024. Let's see how far this thing goes. April, May, June, July. Whoa. It's just June. So I guess it's, what is it? 12 months starting. What happened to the Dufresnes? So it's October through June. How many months is that?

That's weird. It's that, to me, I just did it out of my hand, but I don't know if I'm right about this. That's where that pause was. That nine, you bought yourself a nine-month calendar?

Did I get a classic nine-month calendar?

But I don't know, and what weird, like I would almost get it if they sold a prorated calendar from October to December, that almost makes more sense than just randomly stopping in June.

It might have been September, and I might have just ripped September off without even thinking.

But that still doesn't, then it should go to the end of August.

yeah you're right why does it just hell are you doing blue sky company happening that is the we you bought the weirdest calendar in the world it is really unsettling there's something very there's something very uh what's the oddly um what what is that whole like internet

thing where it's like uh mildly infuriating oh yeah it is cutting the pie but not like in a kind of nice way by the way i'm i promise you the longer i'm not eating for the next week the more

i'm going to be talking about pie and lasagna or or the less actually that you you should by the

way i know but i say i'm saying i will it'll probably move further and further in front of

my brain um never do anything out of hunger even calendaring no what uh god yeah you raised you raised an issue there that i have our it's already flew out of it already out of my brain right out

of your brain well just basically the question of why why do you make a calendar that has between nine and ten months on it i mean it's fine because it is going further like i thought that i was buying something that was just going to be done in january which would or excuse me would have been done after december which would have been kind of a way yeah yeah at least i'm getting i mean i mean i feel like every month that i'm getting in 2024 is just a gift that is true they should

prorate calendars though right like like if you buy a calendar in february it's a little bit

cheaper than if you bought it in january etc etc make it a 12 month calendar you send them all out to the target but then some let's finally get dynamic pricing working for us andrew instead of all of this uh you know them charging us more for for dinner because uh you know it's a busy night or something hey speaking of uh restaurants uh rest in peace to terry rotoro the chef in the hat and a friend of tbtl he uh had lulay in seattle and um uh he also had rover which was a favorite of mine back in the day he and tom douglas did that show together on saturdays for a long time and uh i'm wondering if you ever actually crossed paths with him andrew during your

chiro producing days did you ever yeah yeah he was around i think we talked we talked i don't think he would have ever remembered me and any more than tom douglas would remember me but um yeah i remember them being the the team that would come in while we worked at chiro radio they would come in together and they'd go into a studio and record he was always just like he seemed larger than i didn't know him very well but he seemed larger than life yeah he was a really sweet guy and he

would help us out sometimes uh you know jumping on the show doing little bits with us and stuff i think come on the radio i didn't know that back in the day i think we had him on a few times but he was also just kind of a presence around the station and again we were really good friends with tom douglas as well and i don't know this is just i guess the age we're getting to i mean terry was a bit older than us he was 64. but i could tell you andrew and i hadn't you know talked to terry in in years and years but um but when i booted up the seattletimes.com yesterday and i saw terry's picture before i even read the headline i was just like golly you know what know what I mean like we're at that age where more and more people that we know and and people that we've worked with are reaching the end of their life and I think it's just gonna be like it was it was weird not to center myself in the story of Terry Rotorow's passing but like I just knew immediately I was like this is not because Terry Rotorow just opened a new restaurant this is because Terry Rotorow is has has passed away I just knew that instinctively and in fact that was

the case this is dark i don't even know why i'm saying this i'm not going to say anybody's name here but i have a friend i was telling you this off air last week i have a friend who's in the hospital with some pretty serious stuff going on with with his lungs and everything and he was uh he was uh in a what do they call it medically induced coma for a while this is just last year or i'm sorry this is just last week and he was breathing through you know a tube and an apparatus yeah going into his going directly uh into him and um just two days ago while i was in cleveland it coincided kind of coincidentally that i was there an uncle of mine passed away he was he was also in hospice these two stories are coming together um yeah it is sad and i feel especially bad of course for my aunt who lost her husband and my cousin who lost a dad um and uh and he was sick for a while so he was in hospice but anyway um uh my dad i'm sitting in the uh living room with my dad and he's showing me these posts, these tributes to my uncle that people were posting online. And then I turned to my own phone. This is such a dark, weird thing to say. I don't know why I'm telling you this story. This should have been off air. But I look at my own phone and I get a text from Genevieve that is a quote about the status of my friend who's currently in the hospital. And it said, so-and-so has passed. And I flip my shit out because when we first heard he in the hospital it was very dire and we did not actually know let alone expect him to pull out of this and i i mean it was such a terrible feeling and it was the preview of the text and when you open the text it said he passed his breathing test and oh my god yes that is a true story

any consolation i just went on the same journey with you i was like because you know this person

and i'm sorry i didn't mean to do that i didn't mean to do that to you but i was like oh my god I went from being just.

I mean, this is one of those things that was a split second. In fact, me retelling it, I kept you on the edge of your seat longer. It was one of those things where I looked down and was devastated for a split second and then opened it up and saw, oh, this is great news. He passed his breathing test and they were taking the tubes out. And I mean, that is just fantastic news.

I don't want to blame any messengers, but we got to really be aware of where the line break is on the subject line of the text or email or whatever it is. Well, you know what this was?

this was like somebody like somebody was quoting the doctors who then passed it to friends who were then passing it or you know what i mean so sort of one of those so genevieve passed it along to me literally in quotation marks so there's no real it was just one of those moments just came out that way like oh and like just and especially kind of being in the mindset i was in um looking at these other posts that were like kind of giving somebody tribute i was like oh well i'm

so glad to hear that yeah right i don't want i'm not trying to be coy with the listeners but obviously it's somebody's personal medical stuff but like i'm really i'm really glad that that's how that story of that moment ended because i was going to be like wow i'm surprised i didn't hear more about that and are you okay and you know should we whatever i don't know i just i'm really glad that that was that that was a misunderstanding as opposed to you know what it looked like it was

yeah and i will just say this one other thing too um if listen if listeners are sort of on edge now i will say this is a dear friend of mine but this is not somebody who is is mentioned a lot on tbtl so it's not so don't start like you know worrying about the various people it's not somebody who's really in the tbtl universe yeah so at all yeah but uh it is really good news and i'm hoping to

go see him at the hospital hopefully this weekend awesome well that's i'm i'm really heartened by that news as well um people in new zealand at least some of them are disheartened by this new trend called siren clubs which i actually the more i read about it the more i in a way thought it's the kind of thing i could see you really getting into andrew but then also you really not getting

in oh no yeah no i don't wow i don't see me into this at all well there's an audio aspect of it

that i thought you would find intriguing so basically they're in this town i'm probably going to really kind of mess up the name of this town but it looks like it's porirua uh porirua new zealand where there is a group of of folks that are in these things known as siren clubs and what they basically do are these late night musical battles they blare songs through speakers that um normally top emergency alert towers or police cruisers and they are competing for the title of siren king so this started i guess a little while ago when there was um some sports stuff going on and boy you want to talk about a real blind spot for me um new zealand and australian rugby is not in my wheelhouse but i guess um these uh these that last year during the rugby league world cup in which new zealand's national teams uh men's team it made it to the semi-finals and samoa or let's see i just listened to um i was listening to an episode of something and they had gone to Samoa the person and they were saying Samoa in the real way that it said there and it

is not Samoa. Oh did you know that and this reminded you? No I just learned it the other day

and now I can't now I got it's like Samoa Samoa Samoa so and and Becca and I were listening to it together and we're like well we're never saying Samoa again now Samoa is becoming frigiator to me like my brain wants to say it correctly but it doesn't really know how. Point is everybody was celebrating these rugby outcomes and the way they were celebrating was by driving around with these cars and scooters and things that have been modified to have these giant sirens and speakers on them things that are meant like they said in the article by the way this is a really great piece by jonathan edwards in the washington post um that like these are these are kind of industrial grade speakers that are meant to to like alert people for like a tsunami or something what i thought was kind of fascinating about it is the the goal is to have the music as loud but also as non-distorted as possible so this particular songs that they pick strong voices with a high pitch are favored celine dion's my heart will go on is a big one as is the power of love and also chandelier by sia these are the go-to's because so they're not just playing you know like uh tag team you know some just like bass heavy kind of like because i feel like over here in the states when you get into these like car stereo competitions it's always it's often very bass heavy it's like we're just trying to like just show you how unbelievably loud and vibratory the base can be this sounds like kind of a whole other thing like the competitive aspect of it is get this as loud as you can

but don't distort it and somehow celine dion's voice works really well for that which is just kind of an odd detail to me i i guess maybe that's where you were thinking of me i do appreciate that idea of the aspect of it because you're like i could see you being like wow what's

the loudest i could make something without it distorting without it distorting sure i can sort of see that i did like the idea they call it clean audio it's not just how loud but how clean right can be and I do love that that idea um having said that this idea of blasting something super loud I can't I can't think of anything that you'd be less into given your aversion to loud noises this sounds just like your your hell on earth here uh but also me like they said that they actually use speakers and sound reinforcement um gear that is used for loudspeakers and not just loudspeakers but um what sirens and what was the other word I'm thinking of but like actual municipal like emergency like blaring broadcast signals or not broadcast signals but just blaring sound alert towers or police cruisers yeah alert towers that's the word i'm looking for thank you like that is that's how i mean it just sounds awful to me well so basically what's going on

is the majority of the people uh competing as siren kings or siren queens maybe um are knocking it off at 10 p.m but this article says there are some smaller breakaway factions that keep pumping the sirens into the wee hours i thought this was a great not a great quote but i thought it was an interesting quote from somebody who signed the petition to get the siren kings to stop playing celine d on at two in the morning um although i enjoy celine d on in the comfort of my lounge and at my volume i do not enjoy hearing fragments of it stopping and starting at any time between 7 p.m and 2 a.m i love the idea of this kiwi enjoying celine d on in the comfort of their lounge and at their volume this is like such a very formal way to say look i'm not anti celine dion i'm anti this volume of celine dion at this hour of the night and just little clips of it oh that sounds terrible i still think it would be less annoying to me than a motorcycle engine like i don't know why i mean i don't want to test it on it luckily i don't think it's going to happen out here at the madrona hill studio but like at least it's music like i mean yes if somebody blasting i'm hypersensitive i think somebody last time i said this i feel like somebody emailed in and said that this is probably yet another sign of undiagnosed adhd for me is sensitivity to loud sounds like over sensitivity like when i become i become really kind of viscerally angry it's like i'm trying to return a vacuum cleaner to costco um i become viscerally angry when a loud sound surprises me so if i'm walking down the street and someone just goes by in their motorcycle or whatever not as much from music like if i'm sitting it's for me it's really the aspect of being or it's the element of surprise if that makes any sense if i pull up to a stoplight and somebody is just thumping too short because you know that's what everyone's playing these days on those car stereos um i will pull up next time at the light i'm not really mad about that i think

it's because i hear it coming but what if you pull up what if you pull up to a motorcycle that doesn't have a um that that has one of those really really loud no not just speakers one of those really loud tailpipes you know um you you have a visceral hatred of that and i don't think that you're going to be relaxed around that even if you know it's coming i think you're right i

think the tailpipe thing bothers me because and i know and maybe we've had some motorcyclists out there in our listening audience and there's this whole argument that like you know loud pipes save lives you need to have this thing so noise polluting that no one merges into your lane um i i guess that could be a reality i mean again it's like motorcycle riding is like gaming for me it's something that a lot of people enjoy but because of my level of enjoyment of it is so low i'm like i don't know maybe don't ride a motorcycle but whatever people can live their lives um that being said i think you're right i think that would bother me even if i had a heads up on it music coming out of a stereo doesn't hit my ear quite the same it doesn't make me as viscerally mad maybe because i think yeah this person just really likes they're too short um but uh i i do think that i have an overreaction to loud sounds that that catch me by surprise and like i said i think somebody somebody was pointing out that some kind of element of

some sort of undiagnosed that i'm dealing with here i go once again with the email every week I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man, it's not from a female.

I'm just getting so excited to go get my corrugated cardboard, Andrew, and cut it into the shapes it needs to be so I can put it down so I can start my lasagna situation out there.

Calm down, Garfield. Today's a—I thought we were going to start by talking about this today, but then I started—I hope Genevieve doesn't listen to today's show. But I kind of came out hot talking about the—

the state of the house as I entered it yesterday. But really what I wanted to talk about at the top of the show today is today is a huge day for you, for me and Genevieve here in North Seattle, because this is a day we have had circled on our calendar for months now. It is, if you look at your calendar, I am staring at it right now. Please everybody stare at your nine month calendar and notice the date. It is November 1st.

Yes.

There is, as I'm sure everybody in our listening audience knows, free extra yard waste pickup throughout the month of November here in Seattle. And I have a garage that is filled. Go on, Seth. Go on, Shep.

Jalapeno. Jalapeno. Jalapeno.

I have a garage that is filled with those brown paper compostable bags filled with leaves and debris from my hedge trimming projects this summer that have just been waiting for November to come. I can put out 10 of those bags every pickup day in November. I think we've probably got about 12 to 15 of them. Genevieve wants to know if I'm going to go like with all 10 right away, if I'm going to kick the tires on the system. I guess there's no harm in putting out 10 right away, right? Because Genevieve's like, what if something happens between now and next week? What if it's a disaster? What if the next big earthquake comes and it's like, I didn't take advantage of all of the extra yard pickup.

I can't see any downside. You should maximize it. For we know not what tomorrow brings. So get as many of those. How many bags do you think you have?

I'm going to say between 12 and 15, but I might be exaggerating. from your hedge probably yeah it's mostly from my hedge and also this we and then i there was just regular hedge trimmings and then this bananas thing i did which was i cut way into the hedges which was kind of like cutting down trees and i had all this like kind of these big branches uh almost like limbs or small trees themselves that i ended up sort of like i had a huge piles in my yard and i meticulously de-leafed all of them saved the wood for burning and uh and and put all the leaves in these bags so this is also like kind of the end of a that is a lot of leaves you remember when you came over to our house we had you're going i was just like popping it in the solo stove yeah you guys were all sitting around and i was like trimming trimming trimming and putting all the leaves in the bag and then we were burning the little uh the small little sticks that came off and it was such a stupid way of doing that but um anyway uh yeah so i will let you know how that goes tomorrow um man or friday maybe it's just god damn it's almost like it's almost like i'm making too much out of my life um okay so here's a voicemail that is sort of uh well i guess it's on the topic of uh bubbly soda bubble water which is something that comes up on the show from time to time and i i gotta say i think you are going to comprise my entire diet possibly for oh yeah that's 10 days oh it didn't even occur to me so you're yeah of course bubble water is going to fill you up more than still water so you're leaning in the bubble water

probably i'm gonna just see see where the where the journey takes me i think like i said i've been getting this um i was like becca has the stuff at her house that's like some kind of a additive to water but doesn't have any calories but it makes it taste really yummy so i was like what where do you get that from and uh and so uh i'm getting some of that and i'm gonna try to i don't know come up with a few different ways to trick myself into thinking that my life doesn't completely suck for the next 10 days that's funny because there was a commercial

that there was like a i believe there was a man on a deserted island somewhere and he's like um or he's actually just in a desert um and he finally finds water but then he rejects it because he thinks it's too boring that commercial made me so angry because i kind of like water or something yeah and it's for like some sort of additive that just gives the the water a flavor and he's like oh this water's boring and he throws away i'm like come on what's like really you gotta shit

on water in order to sell your product i guess what about the guy who's on the life raft and the person pulls up on the jet ski to save them and then they don't it's like a glasses for glasses

yeah i like that commercial because i think the person on the jet ski is really charming right isn't like a really funny woman or so just maybe like a down-to-earth woman or something i don't know i remember liking that one i remember really disliking the one where they're rejecting water maybe that's just because i like water i think it you know it's good it's enough it's enough it's good enough anyway uh we talk about bubble water from time to time and sophie has this

conundrum that i think you're going to connect with i think hi this is sophie calling with a bubble water anecdote just because we talk about it you talk about it so much on the podcast but

not too much no and also i like the right amount you know i'm going to start this over i paused it there but um sophie did something there that i've heard other listeners do and then sort of catch themselves and laugh sometimes but i love it somebody i think we even played a voicemail where somebody did this just last week where people say we were talking and then they say well we weren't you you were but I love the fact that listeners yeah we we are talking it's you know you're you're part of the conversation too absolutely okay back to Sophie

hi this is Sophie calling with a bubble water anecdote just because we talk about it you talk about it so much on the podcast um that I needed to get some cash and so I thought the fastest thing is to go to the pharmacy and get a seltzer and get cash back and i go into this walgreens and there is no bubble water except for that brand liquid death and i almost was like like i don't like the branding of it like it's just so weird to me it's like not my style so i've never bought it because it's not i don't want to have a bottle that says death on it with the melting skull but then i bought it and it's like it's not flavored but it has like the bubbles are like smaller if that could be possible than like other seltzer waters that i've had and in like a really satisfying way and i don't know what to do okay bye

you buy so i think a lot of people are familiar with this idea of liquid death it was like just a it's just a water company they sell both sparkling now i guess and still water but they come in tall cans that look almost like an energy drink but like sophie says there's like a skull on and it's got that really gothic looking sort of like writing it's like drinking an ed hardy yeah it's just like look it's tough but i i guess the joke was just kind of like hey this is how we're going to stand out in the marketplace and get people to they i don't know if i don't know if the word ironic is appropriate there or what but like i actually have some intel on that company yeah

because because we were there was a period of time where i was going to do a story about them for cbs and the story as i understand it goes the guy who the guy who invented or whatever founded liquid death he was uh kind of a branding person and he was working on the warped tour and the warped tour was sponsored by monster energy drink and so there was some rule that like only monster energy drink could be consumed on stage during the work tour and he noticed that a lot of the performers just wanted water so they would dump out their monster energy drink and then they would just put water in their can and he started getting this thought like there should be like regular water that kicks as much ass as like a monster energy drink can and he was a branding guy and he just thought like yeah we'll just brand the living tweedle out of this like and we'll just you know it'll be as they say a brand play and like it like crazily enough it worked the first that i ever saw it was when i was in um california near death valley i was up at this old abandoned like silver mine where this guy named brent underwood lives like he he and his friends bought this mining town he was living there during the pandemic and i like go in his house and he just has this big crate of some weird liquid death i go what he goes i don't know they just mailed it to me like they saw that i had this youtube channel and that seemed to be their main approach for a while was just sending it out to people that were like quote unquote influencers or people that had video podcasts or whatever but yeah it has really taken off and it's just wildly popular and stupid and i think even the guy who invented it would tell you it's stupid that's what the only redeeming thing that i can see is i think the guy who who you know founded it would say to you yeah we just were like this let's make the silliest thing we can make and let's just see if it works like i think he kind of would cop to it which is at least

something i mean i guess it does make you think about branding generally speaking right like somebody might go for the aquafina or they're going to go with the square bottle that i can't think of the one with fiji fiji and you're like well i'm more of a fiji because it seems like oh well i'm more of this person it's like it just seems slightly nicer and so like yeah

Fiji, the whole Fiji scene is very bad from what I hear, by the way.

Yeah, I'm sure that none of them are great, but I do love that square bottle. But it doesn't because it speaks to you in a certain way. So then you're saying, OK, well, other people then they see themselves as like driving low riders or skateboarding or whatever. So they need the liquid death stuff. And you're just like, that seems so dumb. But on their hand, aren't we all sort of choosing our products that might be very similar, but we're choosing them because we do have some sort of a some sort of a connection to the way. It's branded in a certain way, like that's interesting to think about. But when it's like this over the top, like tough water, you're just like, you've got to be kidding me. But back to Sophie's point, which I think is really interesting, is it is such a branding thing and it is not a subtle thing. Like nobody's going to say, hey, what are you drinking? Aquafina. Whoa, what is Aquafina? You know, like you're.

You can you can drink any kind of water and nobody's going to comment on it. But you're probably going to get potentially some comments if you're just in a meeting or on a Zoom call or or at the gym or wherever you're drinking your water. And it's like this is not the image that I want to put out into the world. And people might comment on it, but it's just water. But now I like this product. I like what's in the can. It actually appeals to me more, but I don't like the branding. What what is a Sophie to do?

Right. and also is there such a thing as smaller bubbles yeah but I know what Sophie means like different

sparkling water will hit you differently and I know what you mean it feels like probably

crisper maybe in a way something I really now I'm kind of kind of curious to try it although I don't is it the pebble ice of bubbles oh is it just like the sonic ice is it just like a little bit better and then I'm just suddenly going to be like speaking of how we all want to present to the world with our sparkling water choices andrew here's a me opening a perrier oh yeah right that's

gonna have of course perrier is og in that it's the og one yeah totally i mean i just got this

because i was at the gas station and they didn't have any like i wanted to get like a six pack of bubbly and they didn't have anything like that they just had these individual bottles so i got one but i certainly like if i was going into a meeting you know like a i don't know like either at uh at livewire or with you and john or whatever although i'm not so much trying to impress you and john but definitely if i was walking into a meeting like when i do this video at the software concern if i'm holding a perrier in my hand i'm feeling a certain kind of way like it says something like it's like this is a guy who's really made good decisions in his life look he has money for a perrier he's classy whereas if i walk in with a liquid death it's like oh can we should we write this guy out of these commercials like what's going on with him i drink a lot of

bubbly water in ohio i don't usually drink a lot of that stuff you said your dad's been on that train for evs yeah i mean growing up he was always drinking canada dry um soda water with lime like that was always his drink and of course now they keep their refrigerator well stocked with like the various kinds of LaCroix or what have you. And they had some in there that they hated. It was limoncello flavor. Yeah, no thank you. Oh, I ended up drinking them. I wouldn't pick it out, but I didn't hate it as much as they did.

Yeah, I've had that before. Becca had it for some reason. I don't understand. I don't know how or why this happens. But Becca is the most hydrated person that I know. She's just like very, very good about drinking water. And her refrigerator, you open it, and it's like 60% of it is just different bubble water. And then like she'll buy like a bottle of like a plastic bottle of water But the kind that doesn't leach BPAs and then she'll reuse the bottle So it'll be like four of these bottles that have like tap water But it's cold now like it's a whole it's a panoply of water options Um in there but sometimes they'll just be these loose cans of like limoncello Or like are you just finding these on the street? Like it's not like she got a six pack of it She'll have like a what I think it must be that she has they have it at her work and she'll like throw a couple in her bag or something for her walk home um excuse me so it's kind of like a it's the oddest like it's it's a melange of different kind of bubble water options but not again not in a way that appears that she bought like an entire rack of them or whatever but anyways there'll sometimes be like a limoncello in there and i'm you know what they had at livewire the other day that i was like absolutely not I almost wanted to like, I don't know if I mentioned this on the show on this show, but somebody decided to buy You know, they usually someone will get there's there's there's food and stuff backstage and then there's you know Bubble water in the fridge which I avail myself of somebody bought spiced apple Like they're like it seemed like it'd be fall fun It's like and I I really wanted to be like are you out of your ever loving mind? But then that seemed like a pretty big diva move like that really it's like remember that time that he dressed someone down about the bubble water they purchased like I was just I was imagining I was like going into the future to think if my main complaint with my job is they're buying the wrong kind of bubble water to give me for free I've got a pretty good job so I kept it to myself but don't you think there's something deeply off about a person who with all the choices of bubble water they could buy for a group of people who they

may not know their preferences goes with spiced apple okay i'm not gonna i'm not gonna go with the the personal aspect of that is there something deeply wrong with the person who bought this having said that it does seem like if you're drinking sparkly water for me or bubbly bubbly water or sparkling water um you want something that is sort of uh to me like kind of crisp and bright you know and so the idea of leaning into something that is going to be like like cinnamony or clovey. Right.

like that just seems that that i can't yeah that's definitely not for me certainly and it does seem like an odd choice if you're just if you want to go for hey we're having a big meeting we want to supply the water for just like the you want to go with the like least common denominator right

or the most basic lowest common denominator i guess right whatever yeah exactly that's the highest common denominator spiced i feel this very niche yes yeah although then somebody later i don't know if it i don't think it was our executive director but she was strongly making the case for it she's like i thought it looked weird but it's pretty good actually did you try some

no god no i'm not a freak oh perfect great way to end the show yes all right well thank you

everyone for uh tuning in we've got another episode of tbtl coming your way tomorrow so please do join us for that in the meantime everyone out there who's going to have a normal dinner tonight enjoy it because i'm gonna be here drinking my perrier and and and uh and white knuckling it so anyway uh i'll have a report tomorrow of how the first 24 hours of this went i guess uh so please join us for that in the meantime have a great wednesday take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

Okay, my name is Bear, and I want to see if you can figure out this question. How is it physically possible to be allergic to water? Thank you. Power out.